Archive for July, 2008

One party down, one to go! And what a night Thursday was! If you haven’t already done so, check out the selection of photos from the event that are now online. And many thanks to Laura Galeckaite who took most of the 100+ photos on the night – some great shots in there.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who attended the event and made it an extremely enjoyable night. It was great to see so many people making an effort to attend the launch – some of whom travelled from Tipperary, Meath, Cavan, Westmeath, Kildare and other parts of the country. Many even went to the expense of booking into hotels for the night – above and beyond the call of duty, so thanks again to all!

It was great to finally, after 5 ½ years, be able to sell copies of my book in person and bring this hard but rewarding project to fruition. To those who have already purchased the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts on same, so feel free to email me at info@lordoftherams.com. And if you like the book, please tell a friend or two and let them know that it can be purchased via the links on my website – http://www.lordoftherams.com/buythebook.htm.

Already, the party to end all parties beckons. The Cavan launch of Lord of the Rams takes place this Friday 1 August 2008 in The Ramor Inn, Ryefield, Virginia, Co. Cavan. With guests coming from London, Cologne and various other parts of the country, it promises to be a fantastic night! Two of the main characters in the book will also be giving speeches at the launch and reading extracts from the book. Combine that with food, music and Munterconnaught’s finest sons and daughters, and you know where you need to be this Friday.

Interview from The Anglo Celt
Published during the week, this two page interview and extract from the book will help to further publicise the book in my home county.

Site updates after today will be thin on the ground for a while as I’m taking a week off after the Cavan launch. The Blog will be updated on Monday 4 August and photos from the Cavan launch will follow about a week later. I will be checking my emails though so please email me at info@lordoftherams.com if you have any questions/comments.

Quite a few updates to the site have been made this week. Yesterday, I added an article from last Saturday’s Evening Herald newspaper, which is the first of the national papers to feature a write-up on the book. Read the article here.

And today, two big updates:

Extract 3 from Lord of the Rams
The final action-packed extract details a trip to London where I ran into a wee spot of bother. Click here for details.

Final details on both Lord of the Rams book launches
Comprehensive information detailing what’s you can expect at the launch parties in Dicey Reilly’s, Harcourt Street, Dublin 2 on 24 July 2008 and in The Ramor Inn, Ryefield, Virginia, Co. Cavan on 1 August 2008. Click here for details.

The third extract, mentioned above and published on the site today, is from the latter part of Lord of the Rams. It’s definitely one of my favourite stories from the book, and one that virtually wrote itself. Before I began writing Lord of the Rams, there were certain key events that I knew would definitely make it into the finished book – and this London-based adventure was always one of them. I think visually it’s quite strong – you can almost picture the scene in your head; indeed it wouldn’t look out of place in a movie / comedy caper! And yes, all of this actually happened, although I may have taken artistic liberties with the ‘red dots’ reference ? Hope you enjoy it!

Log on to the site next week if you can’t make it to either of the book launches but want to pick up a copy of Lord of the Rams. Details on where you can purchase it online will be published on the site next Wednesday evening (with details on shops stocking the book to follow over the coming weeks).

This week certainly marks the calm before the storm. Just two weeks to go until the official launch of Lord of the Rams.

The website is still pulling in pretty good traffic from a host of different countries: Ireland, England, Scotland, Germany, United States, Australia, France, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Canada, Indonesia, and a few other countries that I haven’t been able to identify.

Incidentally, for those of you with an interest in website marketing / traffic analysis, I’m using Google Analytics to monitor the traffic on my site. It’s free to use, easy to incorporate into your website and is much better than a lot of the commercial products that are on the market. It also produces really snazzy reports.

Another interesting feature of Google Analytics (and most other similar products) is the ‘Keywords’ report, which allows you to see what keywords people are using to find your website via the search engines.

Unbelievably, in the past week one visitor found my website by typing ‘an bhfuil cead agam dul go dti an leithreas mas e do thoil e’ into Google (see Extract 1 to spot the relevance of this search result) whilst another individual logged onto the site via the keywords ‘water into wine poster’ (again, see Extract 2 for the relevance of said query). Not sure if either web surfer found what they were looking for on lordoftherams.com, but it just goes to show how powerful Goggle is and how quick it is to index websites.

Anyway, it probably sounds like I’m working for Google, so …

Just to let you know, there will be a few significant updates to the site next week (Thursday 17 July 2008):

Extract 3 from Lord of the Rams
The final extract describes a weekend in London where I nearly met my water loo.

Final Details on the Launch Parties
More info on the events in Dicey Reilly’s, Harcourt Street, Dublin 2 on 24 July 2008, and in The Ramor Inn, Ryefield, Virginia, Co. Cavan on 1 August 2008.

If you have any comments, as always direct them via this blog or by emailing me directly at info@lordoftherams.com.

It has been an exciting seven days since the launch of lordoftherams.com. The website has received significant traffic (bearing in mind that the marketing campaign only really began last Wednesday) and people have been very generous with their feedback via email, the blog and in person. So a big thanks to all who have been in touch – your comments have been much appreciated.

You may have noticed that a second extract from Lord of the Rams has been posted on the website. I could have done the obvious and posted the second chapter of the book. But I wanted to provide readers with a taste of later chapters without giving too much away.

Last week’s extract (Chapter 1) detailed my early days in primary school. This week’s extract, however, jumps ahead by several years to 1996 when I started college in Waterford. A large part of the book deals with my two years spent in Waterford, and it was these years in particular that partly inspired me to write Lord of the Rams.

No money (and I mean absolutely no money) meant that my flatmates (who were equally poor) and I had to find ever-inventive ways of entertaining ourselves and providing basic provisions for the flat. This week’s extract (Extract 2- Turning the Water into Wine) deals with our attempts to secure free Cablelink for the flat, but the complete book portrays in much more detail our very pathetic but hilarious existence: the novel ways in which we heated the flat, visits from our overly-nosey rent collector, the further dilapidation of our already dilapidated flat, putting food on the table and still managing to go for a few beers, and dealing with our very own stalker.

Waterford: Two years, but a lifetime of stories!

If you have any comments on the latest extract, direct them via this blog or by emailing me directly at info@lordoftherams.com. The final extract from Lord of the Rams will be published on the site on Thursday 17 July 2008.

Don’t forget: Launch parties in Dicey Reilly’s, Harcourt Street, Dublin 2 on 24 July 2008, and in The Ramor Inn, Ryefield, Virginia, Co. Cavan on 1 August 2008. See last week’s blog for more information.